STRUGGLE FOR REFORM SPLITS SOVIET MILITARY

Mid-level Soviet military officers say they are stymied after filing formal charges against their superiors who backed the failed attempt to topple President Mikhail Gorbachev.

The officers, primarily majors and lieutenant colonels, say the Defense Ministry has taken no action against those who, almost as soon as the coup was under way Aug. 19, had ordered them to support it. The orders provoked near-mutiny in some units.

Reports now emerging from within the officers corps also indicate that support for the coup in the armed forces` senior echelons-starting with then- Defense Minister Dmitri Yazov-was far more extensive than previously known.

This confrontation in the ranks comes at a time when tensions within the military already are high. Distressed by low pay and a worsening housing shortage as units return home in the post-Cold War era, the troops are now confronted by unemployment.

The Defense Ministry last week announced it was cutting its forces by 700,000 men to a total of 3 million and said deeper cuts were being considered.

''The situation in the armed forces is very tense,'' said Lt. Col. Vyacheslav Solovyov, an official of a group known as Shield that was established two years ago to defend the rights of servicemen.

Shield has received reports from across the country of confrontations between mid-level officers and their commanders, Solovyov said. It was he who said there were even reports of near-mutinies in some units.

Solovyov, 42, a veteran of the war in Afghanistan who is now stationed near Moscow, said he has refused to return to his unit to protest that no action has been taken against his commanding officer for supporting the coup. Soon after the coup began on Aug. 19, Solovyov said, his commander, Col. Alexander Semakin, instructed all officers in the unit to support the coup leaders and follow their orders.

Maj. Galmantdin Husnimordanov, a recruiting officer in the Byelorussian town of Grodno, said his commander called together the unit`s seven officers Aug. 19 and openly supported the coup.

The commander, Lt. Col. Oscar Dauletov, placed the unit on the highest level of alert that night and told them to prepare to call up the reservists if the situation deteriorated.

''He said (Russian President Boris) Yeltsin and (St. Petersburg Mayor Anatoly) Sobchak were swine, and he said the coup should have happened four or five years earlier,'' Husnimordanov said last week in Moscow.

Husnimordanov said he was in the capital to try to follow up on the complaint he filed against Dauletov Sept. 1. Despite his telegrams to the new Defense Minister Yevgeny Shaposhnikov, ''Nothing has happened.''

The ministry sent an inspector to Grodno, but Husnimordanov alleges that his commander and the inspector, Lt. Col. Alexander Nagets, colluded in a cover-up of events during the coup.

Lt. Col. Pavel Zhmak, who is assigned to the Chkalovsky air base outside Moscow, said a split in the officer corps had been evident for some time.

''The highest level of the armed forces` command was so far away from the needs and the mood of the men they commanded,'' he said.

Echoing the view of many, Zhmak said the root of the problem lay in the divided nature of command that has existed in the Soviet armed forces for decades.

''The (Communist) Party organs were far superior and resisted the military commanders,'' he said.

Traditionally, from the company level up, every Soviet military unit had a political officer who monitored the political correctness of officers and men and who was charged with ensuring Communist Party control through the ranks.

It was through these officers that the party dispensed favors to buy loyalty-better housing and pay, promotion, jobs for spouses in isolated parts of the country and even scarce places in kindergartens.

In the highest ranks, officers are provided with country homes, drivers and luxurious apartments while middle-rank officers often live in poverty.

Solovyov earns 680 rubles a month-only $21, and a meager sum in a city where a pound of meat can cost 25 rubles and a watermelon as much as 100 rubles.

Recalled from eastern Germany as part of the Soviet pullout following reunification, he returned to Moscow with his wife and two younger children without a place to live.

Now, after 23 years of active duty, he lives with his oldest daughter, her husband and their two children-eight people in all-in an apartment of only 215 square feet.

Shield claims that as many as 200,000 Soviet military officers don`t have their own apartment.

''There is more than enough powder for an explosion,'' said Lt. Col. Constantine Andrev, 64, a retired officer and active supporter of Shield.